KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 21): Malaysia's new Covid-19 cases rose to 6,210 on Thursday — up 12.58% from 5,516 a day earlier — after staying below the 6,000 mark for three consecutive days.
Of the latest infections, 6,168 were local transmissions and 42 were imported cases, said Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah in a statement.
According to him, only 116 or 1.9% of Thursday's cases were regarded as serious (Categories 3,4 and 5), while the other 6,094 or 98.1% were Categories 1 and 2 cases.
Meanwhile, 677 individuals were being cared for in intensive care units, of whom 501 were confirmed to be positive for Covid-19 while 176 were suspected cases.
Of these, 319 patients needed ventilators to help them breathe, including 205 confirmed Covid-19 cases.
Daily recoveries continued to exceed daily infections at 7,562, bringing the total recoveries to 2,304,851. In contrast, the country's cumulative Covid-19 infections to date is 2,413,592.
In terms of Covid-19 clusters, Dr Noor Hisham said six new clusters were identified in the last 24 hours, for a total of 591 active clusters.
Three of the new clusters were related to communities detected in Selangor, Sabah and Negeri Sembilan, involving a total of 74 infections.
Two others were workplace clusters in Negeri Sembilan and Selangor with a total of 61 infections, while a high-risk group cluster identified in Sabah had 34 infections.
256,497 daily Covid-19 vaccine doses administered on Oct 20; 38.7% of adolescents fully vaccinated
A total of 22,047,448 individuals or 94.2% of the adult population of the country had completed their Covid-19 vaccination as of Wednesday (Oct 20).
Based on the Health Ministry’s data on the COVIDNOW portal, they were among 97.3% of the adult population or 22,775,864 individuals who had received at least one dose of the vaccine.
A total of 256,497 doses of the vaccine were dispensed on Wednesday, up from 134,684 the day before.
As for teenagers aged 12 to 17 years, a total of 2,509,535 individuals or 79.7% of those in the age group had received at least the first dose of the vaccine, including 1,218,000 individuals or 38.7% had completed the vaccination.